


Translation Error

by dagonst



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-01-27 21:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1722617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dagonst/pseuds/dagonst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is extremely unhealthy."  After Project Insight, the Winter Soldier turned himself over to Steve Rogers, and Steve took him home to recover.  And it wasn't exactly good, but they were getting by until Natasha invited herself in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> I borrowed from the comics, where Natasha is older than she looks and has a history with the Winter Soldier.

### Natasha

“This is extremely unhealthy.” It needs to be said, and Natasha is the only person likely to ever see it. Steve Rogers’s apartment, living room. Relevant contents: super-soldier, fugitive assassin, two vodka bottles, and one large glass.

“He can’t sleep,” Steve explains, after she looks pointedly at the bottles. The Winter Solder, seated on the couch behind him, stares past her with the blankness of indifference, training, and extensive trauma. He hasn’t moved since Rogers told him to stand down. 

“This isn’t the dark ages, Rogers. There are better ways. Quicker, more effective, no -”

“No drugs,” the soldier - Barnes, now, maybe - says to the wall behind her. 

Natasha purses her lips. “Hangover. No lingering side effects.”

“No drugs,” he repeats, without raising his voice. “And no whiskey.” 

“We tried that first,” Rogers admits.

Of course they tried that first. “Americans.” Natasha washes her hands of it, and moves on to business. “I brought your translations, Rogers. Voiceprint recognition, encrypted, plug in anything but this charger and it will wipe the drive.” She glances sidelong, but the soldier doesn’t react to that either.

Rogers takes the tablet. “Thank you. Stark tech?”

“Stark personally. He’s been cleared.” Cleared, briefed, now suing the official remains of SHIELD into oblivion.

“We found paper files in that Arlington lab,” Rogers explains to the soldier. “Some of it was in Russian, so I asked Natasha to look.”

“I know Russian,” the soldier says. Fails to turn when he speaks to Rogers. She is likely only projecting, thinking there is an edge to his words now.

“Next time they’re all yours, Buck.” No reaction again. HYDRA wiped the soldier clean after every mission, lacking confidence in his loyalties and their own security. Burned him out, maybe, but she should confirm before she leaves. There’s no harm in glasnost-era files. A Red Room operative is a different matter.

Natasha dodges around Rogers again to stand in front of the soldier, sets her bag on the table and picks up the soldier’s glass. She drinks - a challenge, not a polite sip. Nothing. “/ _This is foul, Vanya. You have forgotten good vodka. Do you remember me?_ /” 

Rogers watches her, uncomfortable but not alarmed. “He probably - Bucky doesn’t talk much.”

“Romanova, Natalia Alianova,” the Winter Soldier says. “SHIELD, SVR, KGB.”

“/ _That’s from a file. Some things weren’t written down. Like the Red Room._ /” She walks around the table to stand in front of him, pulls her shirt up to display the scar. “/ _Do you remember this?_ /” 

Rogers starts with “I’m not sure,” then stops when the soldier leans forward to touch the scar. He uses his right arm, leaves the left loose on the arm of the couch. His fingertips cool as he traces above her waist to the exit wound in her back. He remembers.

His lips twist, a ghost of the grin Vanya might have given her. She has that memory, Vanya grinning. “/ _That was a good shot_ /,” he says, his eyes far away. Then the Winter Soldier moves.

It’s over in half a second - metal fingers squeeze her neck, shove her down against the table, then Rogers starts yelling and he’s gone. 

She pulls a full breath, decides nothing’s broken, then sits up enough to see past Rogers’ concerned looming. Barnes at the foot of the couch, the only color in his face what the vodka put there. There’s a gun in his left hand, aimed at nothing.

“It’s the scar,” he says finally. “She doesn’t scar. So who the hell is that.”

“Natasha’s one of us, Buck. She’s on our side.” Rogers keeps trying to angle to stay between her and Barnes. 

“This time I am,” Natasha clarifies. “No hard feelings.”

“You shut up,” Barnes snaps. “She’s a plant, Captain. Natalia doesn’t have scars. We need to find out who she is.”

“Bucky, I know who she is. I read the file on the mission where - where she was shot.” The file was small: her report, which did not name the Winter Soldier (no longer Vanya); Coulson’s diktat of medical leave, falsely implying a long recovery.

She speaks slowly, strings together all the old codes she can remember. “There were flowers by the road, red and yellow. The woman whose place I have taken, she has been gone a long time. She would have become old, sitting on a bench in the sun, feeding bread to the ducks.” Safe, clear, location secure, ally. 

It plainly baffles Rogers, but the soldier looks at her. Vanya looks at her. “Explain the scar. Did they make it?” 

“SHIELD let the wound heal like that. Not like the old days.” Only Captain America heals cleanly. In the Red Room, they would have abraded the skin until it grew back smooth and unmarked. Or cut her until she had the marks they wanted. 

“I know that. I don’t remember,” Vanya says. English, again. 

“That’s normal,” she tells him. “Rogers, I think we’re good here.”

Rogers lets out a breath. “Give me the gun, Bucky. I’ll put it away with the rest.“ The soldier passes the pistol to his right hand, gives it to the captain. 

As soon as Rogers leaves, he resumes his seat and drains the glass of vodka in large gulps. 

“/ _So, Vanya._ /”

“Don’t. I try to be James Barnes. I am not good at that. I will not be good at Vanya, either.” 

“I don’t need you to be Vanya. But you do need to be functional, Barnes. What is your mission?”

“Captain Rogers.” 

“You take orders from Rogers, how is he your mission?”

“He is - the mission -” Barnes stops. Shrugs, one-shouldered, starts again. “Everything is fucked. Dead, compromised, gone. The Captain is not. So the mission gives orders.” 

“I could give orders.”

“You could try.” Too toneless to sound like a threat, but she doesn’t mistake it for an invitation.

She pulls the spare handgun from her bag, and gives one anyway. “Keep him safe.” 

Barnes glances towards the bedroom. “He crashes planes while he is still on them.” But he opens his hand in a gesture of futility, and takes the weapon. 

When Steve walks in, Natasha starts with, “You need to take him to Stark about the arm.”

Rogers makes a face. “His arm’s fine, Natasha. We’re doing fine.”

He’s not thinking ahead, or about what’s happening outside this apartment. Perhaps that’s too much to expect from an old man, though, so instead she says, “Would he say, if it hurt?”

“He has a name. And of course. Right, Bucky?”

“If it impaired function,” Barnes agrees, and Rogers looks unsettled. 

“You’re not still hung up on how he’s a rich genius, are you? Because if you’re going to be insecure, Captain America -”

“I’m not insecure -”

“Good. There’s more than one redhead in the world.”

“Thank you, Natasha,” Steve says, quellingly. 

Barnes says nothing.

“Take him to see Stark,” she repeats, then shrugs her annoyance away. “Soon. I’ll check in tomorrow.”

“You can’t just -”

“I can bring a friend,” Natasha suggests, seeing her opening. “Make it a double-date?” 

“Please don’t,” Rogers says firmly, and just as quickly gives way. “Just you.”

Natasha smiles on her way out the door. “Good night, Captain.”

### Steve

“He is not your friend.” The sentence is too blunt, in the the flurry of texts Natasha sent after she left. “Sry for the girlfriend jab. Testing Barnes. He is not your friend.” And, “But he is your operative. Also used to be Russian. Layers of programming. Be careful.”

Bucky’s a mess, of course, he knew that, anyone would be. HYDRA had him for decades, and he spent months on his own after that. But he finally came in, too thin, running on amphetamines instead of sleep. Still doesn’t sleep enough, doesn’t eat until Steve tells him to. Sits and stares at nothing, shell-shocked, until Steve prods him along. _He is your operative._

“I said I’d help him and I will,” he sends back. “He trusted me.”

The reply comes immediately. “Why?” He doesn’t answer.

Steve takes Bucky along running in the morning. Then showers, which gives him time to keep thinking. He walks into the bathroom when Bucky’s still showering. Bucky doesn’t ask what the hell he’s doing, doesn’t react at all. “Bucky,” he finally says, and Bucky stops, turns the water off. “We need to talk. When you finish.” Bucky nods, sharp. 

Bucky walks out braced for trouble. “It’s nothing bad,” he says. “I just - Natasha said some things. I want to be sure you’re okay. Are you okay?”

“No.” He can’t disagree. But he’d hoped, somehow, that Bucky didn’t realize how messed up he still was. That it was less awful for him.

“I know the sleep thing. The nightmares. What else?”

“Bucky Barnes - I don’t remember enough, don’t know enough to be him. To maintain cover. That’s what Natasha said.”

“Not quite. What do you mean, cover?”

“The cover identity I had in the 40s.” He knows what a cover identity is, but it takes him a minute to connect it to _Bucky_ and he misses the next thing Bucky says in that flat voice.

“You. . . Are you saying you don’t think it’s real? You mean, Brooklyn?”

Bucky looks as confused as he does, and more suspicious. “No. I went to Brooklyn. Last month.” 

Bucky can be literal, sometimes. “I meant - you grew up there too.”

“That’s the cover,” Bucky agrees. “Bucky Barnes grew up in Brooklyn, New York. And Vanya was born outside Moscow. But they are not real. I am.”

“You are. . .” An operative, Natasha said.

“The Winter Soldier.” He says it simply, with a strange innocence. He means he’s always been like this, Steve realizes, gut twisting. Always been a weapon, with nothing of his own, that anything real he remembers is a story he used for a mission once. 

“Bucky. Bucky, Jesus.”

Bucky looks away, thinking. “If you - you blew up Arlington, but there was another base they used, sometimes. Maybe older. They might have the equipment there, or it could be rebuilt.”

“What equipment?” Steve asks, trying to catch up.

“Neural reset. It would stop the malfunctions. Stop the - you can just put in what I need to be Bucky.”

Neural reset was, a HYDRA agent had told him, what they used the chair for. “You’re Bucky _now_. I’m not going to fry your brain, you need it.” 

“That’s the only thing that’s going to fix this, Captain. I’ve tried, but -”

“No. Bucky, if anyone tries to do that to you again, I will shoot them. Same goes for everything else in those files. That’s over.” 

“But you knew. You knew what I was.” Bucky looks - panicked, more than anything. “You said.”

“I know _who you are_ ,” Steve counters. “I’ve known you since we were kids.”

“No,” Bucky insists. “Please, Captain. You knew, you had to know. You said.” 

“Calm down, Bucky. Come and sit.” He tries to sound calm himself, doesn’t know that he’s managing now that he’s starting to figure out how Bucky’s thinking. He gets him to the couch, and Bucky sits, autopilot. Trusting. Why does he trust you, Natasha wanted to know. 

“I think you should tell me what happened after Project Insight. Why you decided to come in. If you can.”

“Debriefing,” Bucky says shakily. Nods. 

“Debriefing, sure.” That’s just a fancy word for talking, and Bucky seems to relax. Good enough. He realizes what the first question he needs to ask is. Feels like hell saying it, but: “Have you had any contact with HYDRA since Project Insight failed?”

### Debriefing

“I tried to report in,” the soldier claims, looking at nothing. He could check how his handler is taking it, but he knows already: not well. Mission failure. Critical mistakes of judgment when, probably, he should not have been using judgment at all. 

“I went to the safe houses, first. The agents who came did not have the right codes. Not authorized. So -” He shifts back to relevant information. “The other places I went, the same.” The war had changed. SHIELD, HYDRA. Nothing to him, except that he had nowhere to report, no new mission.

“Those agents - were they SHIELD or HYDRA? What happened?” Right. The handler decides what information is relevant. He only reports. 

“I don’t know what they were. They were not authorized to know that I exist. I killed them.” It was a waste; they would have been useful assets. But not authorized. He looks up a very little, enough to see the handler run a hand over his face. 

“And then you found the Smithsonian exhibit?”

“Yes. From the news reports about the stolen uniform.” It took longer than it should have to realize that the Smithsonian exhibit was more than propaganda, more than something else he should have been briefed on. An unbroken chain of command, seventy years old. Not SHIELD, not HYDRA, United States Army. 

“What did you think about it? The exhibit,” his handler adds quickly. “Not the uniform.”

“It was useful, despite the obvious lies. Captain Rogers was Barnes’ superior officer. Rogers recognized me as Barnes, expected me to know him. Before he saw my face, there was no reason or opportunity to invent that story.” _I thought - I think - I was once Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes._ But he doesn’t say that. Not relevant.

“You kept going to the HYDRA bases, though.” 

“That was necessary.” 

His handler does not ask _why_ it was necessary, and he is grateful. “You… you ran into Captain Rogers a few times. On purpose?”

“Yes. He was searching the installations, destroying them. Looking for information.” Searching for him; he had known that. “You’re looking pretty rough, Buck. You ought to come in.” “Is that an order?” “No, but it’s a good idea, don’t you think?” 

“But you were still looking for a HYDRA agent to report to.”

He winces, but has to answer. “No.”

“Okay. Can you say why?”

The handler should ask for yes or no, not for - irrelevant material. “There was a video recording of a fight, in the news. I was there. It was relevant to the last mission, but I had no memory of it. He - Pierce - sent me to hunt people I had already fought and failed to kill. Without information. I am too valuable to be sent to die.”

The handler smiles for the first time. “I agree,” he says, but the soldier keeps talking.

“I thought - that Pierce had compromised the mission. That was an error. The failure was mine. And I thought -” _thought, damn it_ \- “there was an alternative.”

“You knew HYDRA had betrayed you, and thought you could go to Rogers. Right? So why the HYDRA bases?” 

“I had to make certain of Rogers. If he only knew the cover identity, I could not report to him. I had to be certain he knew what I am.”

“So you waited until you were sure.” 

Waited. He investigated, learned everything he could about Rogers and Barnes. Watched Rogers and his friends. Stole his own file, left it where the Captain would find it. Circled around to run into him on the way out. Captain Rogers had called him Bucky again, and he told the Captain he’d seen the exhibit. _It’s good for what it is, I guess. It’s not how it really was,_ the Captain said. Not relevant, he decides. “Yes.”

“What did you think was going to happen, when you did report in?”

He’d like to never hear that question again. “I didn’t think. That’s not my concern.” But that isn’t an answer, not really. “Debrief. Repairs. Another mission. New orders. Not _nothing_.”

“Nothing,” the handler repeats, irritated. “You came in wrecked. You needed to get better. That’s not enough to do?”

“I _am_ better,” the soldier snaps. Part of him cringes at speaking that way to his handler. Insubordination. _Pain._ “Romanova is good. But I am better. I am faster, stronger than anyone but you. _You_ are the one that is not -” He’s standing, shouting, shuts up just - maybe - in time. Maybe. 

“That’s not what I - Jesus. Bucky, look at me.” He looks, but flinches when the captain reaches for him. Another wrong response, another failure to be Bucky Barnes. Maybe he’s already too far gone for the reset. Too late to find out.

“I said I’d help you, and I mean that. It’s not as easy as either of us thought it was going to be, but we’ll get through. We can figure this out. Just - don’t leave now, okay?” The way Rogers says it, it isn’t an order. It’s a plea. What he thinks of that must show, somehow, because the captain sighs again. “Bucky. Don’t leave here until we sort this out. That’s an order. Understood?”

He means to say, understood. “You blew up my other options,” comes out instead. “I helped you do it. Where the hell would I go?”


	2. Part 2

### Equipment, Maintenance, Supplies

Rogers got smart, _ordered_ him to stay. Then shut himself in the other room to talk to Sam Wilson, leaving him to think over everything he got wrong. Hell, he could have walked into any HYDRA base, and let them figure out who could deal with the Winter Soldier. And instead he’d - 

He needs to stop. Equipment, maintenance, supplies: those are safe to think about. No guns to clean, except the one he isn’t supposed to have, the one to protect Steve Rogers. Protect his handler. Only, the handlers are nothing but names in the records. And the records said - 

The Winter Soldier had malfunctioned, refused to take orders in English. The repairs took months and they tested their progress by sending the Winter Soldier against the Russians who’d brought him there. When he did not remember, did not hesitate, did not answer when the targets spoke to him - then the mission was a success, and he was allowed to rest.

He could still complete the last mission. James Buchanan Barnes was real, but was never important. He is a soldier. Steve Rogers doesn’t know that. Thinks he’s something that he isn’t and maybe never was. That’s not a reason to hesitate - that’s the end of the line.

Rogers will not expect it. The Captain will hold back where the Winter Soldier does not. It will be close range, messy - a full clip into the Captain’s head. Natasha Romanov will return in a matter of hours. It would be prudent to stay and kill her next. After, he will need to wash, change clothes. No use cleaning the room. Complete the mission. _Keep him safe_ , she said. 

Maintenance. He is damaged and Rogers will not complete repairs. To be operational again, he needs to complete the mission. He is damaged and he wants - 

He _wants_. Wanting repairs is the malfunction. The realization comes with a wave of dizzy relief. A malfunction, like wanting orders in Russian. He keeps misunderstanding Rogers, but ‘that’s over’ is plain enough. No repairs. The captain will decide when they’ve reached the end of the line, when he’s failed. It’s bad now, but if he fails - the consequences for for failure are always worse. 

Supplies. If you have to think, he tells himself, think of something useful. The captain worries about food, and they’ll run out if Natasha Romanov returns on schedule. 

* * *

Captain Rogers returns when the doorbell rings, and the soldier does not move.

“Bucky -”

“I ordered it. Pizza.” He placed the same order as the captain had before, the same place. 

“Pizza,” the captain echoes, looking at him funny, then shakes his head and answers the door. Bucky waits out of sight of the door, ready, but there’s no trouble. 

“How did you. . . I was talking to Sam. You didn’t go out.” He holds up the tablet computer he’d brought with him, from the safe house. The captain has a similar model, also SHIELD-issue, but doesn’t turn it on. 

“Huh. Good thinking.” Rogers flips the top box open, looking - like he’s done something right. “Used to be, we couldn’t even phone for pizza. And we didn’t have a phone. Why pizza?” 

“I needed to stop thinking about killing you,” he says. Maybe the captain will stop asking what he’s thinking. Maybe not; he shouldn’t care either way. 

Rogers’s smile goes tight. “You want to take a shot at me, huh. And then, what? You’d go back to HYDRA?”

The captain can’t help him if he lies. “Yes.”

“Well.” Rogers shrugs. “Lucky all the guns are locked up. Let’s eat.”

He’d forgotten Natasha’s gun - put it out of mind until needed. He sets it on the table, next to the napkins. Remembers what the Captain’s corpse would have looked like. “She said to keep you safe,” he says, quiet. 

“You’re taking orders from Natasha now?”

“No. Only weapons.”

“Well.” The captain doesn’t take the gun, glances at it and then back to him. “I think we better sort this out. No shield, no guns, someplace that won’t break. Sound good?”

It sounds good. Taking a beating never taught Rogers anything, but he could give it another shot. But he knows this test. Knows better than to acknowledge what the captain said, or even remember having heard it. So he keeps his face still and wants nothing. 

“What, you’ll shoot me, but you can’t take a fair fight? You used to be better than that, Buck.”

He’s on his feet before he can think aabout it, fists clenched. Rogers stands too, gives him a tight grin. “Thought so. So where’s the problem? You want me to order you to try to beat me up?” 

“ _Yes._ ” He shouldn’t answer, but he’s already broken and Rogers _never gives up_. Rogers should not be standing here, this close, weapons to hand. The captain should have guards, bars, speakers. But Rogers doesn’t know him - doesn’t know any better. Better to admit it and take the consequences.

Rogers smiles wider, claps him on the shoulder. “Well, too bad.” 

Rogers doesn’t have any sense at all. 

He puts all his weight behind the punch, and Captain America goes sprawling. His stomach twists, but it’s worth everything they’ll have to do to fix him. They’ll take his memories; he’ll have guards, see the captain through glass, and won’t know why. Steve will remember, won’t leave himself open like that again - that’s good enough.

But first Rogers comes up fighting, like he’d known he would.

### Natasha

Steve Rogers’s apartment, living room. Relevant contents: super-soldier and fugitive assassin, two vodka bottles, levels unchanged, no glass, no chair, three pizza boxes, and her handgun. 

Barnes, (black eye, cut lip) had reached for the gun and Rogers (possible jaw fracture, black eyes) had caught him. Barnes shakes his hand free and sits back, left hand clenched. Rogers flushes, maybe at the state of the room. “I forgot you were coming, sorry.”

“Not something I hear a lot. I’m glad to see you’re doing better. Hitting back when the fate of the world wasn’t at stake, I think that’s progress.” From the state of the room, Barnes wasn’t trying to kill him. “Who started it?”

“It just sort of happened,” Steve says, which means Barnes threw the first punch. Which could be progress, a problem, or both. “Bucky’s pissed off because I won’t fry his brain like HYDRA did. Let me get you a chair.”

“No need.” She hands him her shopping bag. “Bottles go in the freezer. These too.” She takes the middle of the couch before Steve can volunteer for that too. She doesn’t plan on provoking the Winter Soldier to attack her again; if he’s that unstable, that’s information she wants to have. 

She leans back, stretches her neck. “Not sure how you got the idea that Rogers would continue any of HYDRA’s protocols, Barnes. He’s not actually capable.”

“That museum. I saw it. I thought the story about Barnes and Rogers in the war was a cover.” 

“The state lying to the public, very Russian. It would have made a good cover.” Steve gets back in time to give her an unhappy look for that. She shrugs. 

“If I had understood the situation, I would have -”

“Gone somewhere else?” Natasha shifts to the coffee table for a better view of the Winter Soldier, and Steve on the other end of the sofa. He couldn’t have given her a better opening if they’d been working together. “HYDRA would be the obvious choice. But they’re not the only game around. SHIELD could use you.” Barnes looks away, refusing eye contact. “There’s structure, which you don’t have here. There’s plenty of work. SHIELD does not generally run medical experiments on active agents. I have contacts there.”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t answer, doesn’t move. Tensed, with his head tipped forward. 

Steve breaks in, anxiety poorly hidden. “Natasha, I know you’re trying to help but -”

She cuts him off. “Yes, Steve, I am trying to help. Sergeant Barnes and I have worked for some of the same people. When I left, I learned that everything I thought I had - memories, country, family - was invented to keep me on a leash. The only thing that was really mine was the training. And I was very angry.” She takes a breath. “SHIELD saved me. Gave me a future, a purpose. A chance to make things right. They’re rebuilding; they have a long way to go. But it is an option.”

SHIELD gave her a lot, including the ability to see that it needed to die. It had been good for her. The revived version might be good for Barnes. Except for his ties to HYDRA. Except for the leverage he’d give them over Captain America. Except that it’s not Barton and Coulson anymore. SHIELD would take the Winter Soldier, no question. They might not use him well. Psych profiles were easier when she trusted the people she gave them to.

“I was going to say,” Steve says slowly, “that HYDRA didn’t like people having opinions about this kind of thing.” She should never underestimate Captain America’s capacity for self-sacrifice. And how hard he takes things, like nothing bad would have happened if he hadn’t been lost in the Arctic. “Bucky. If you think you have a better shot at SHIELD, if you think it will help, then go. There’s no wrong answer. You understand, Bucky?”

Barnes lifts his head just enough that he can see Rogers. “No consequences. I understand.” There are always consequences, and always ways to get something wrong. 

Barnes doesn’t speak again. His eyes move, from Rogers to the gun on the table, back. He’s too good to look at a weapon he’s planning to use, so - considering the threat he poses to Captain Rogers. That was a best-case scenario, that he’d think of that, but she still needs the decision.

“Do you have any questions about SHIELD?”

“How soon would I be active?”

“Virtually immediately. SHIELD is currently engaged in locating and eliminating known HYDRA agents. A few agents find hunting down their former colleagues therapeutic, but not many. They could use the help.” 

“His handlers,” Steve says. “We don’t know who they all were, where they are now. He wouldn’t be able to attack them.” Natasha does not remember having that problem. She turned on her keepers once, and made it count.

“I’m not theirs. I came here.” It’s almost a question.

“That’s right, you came here,” Steve says. Barnes said that if he had known where to find his HYDRA handlers, he would have gone there. “Bucky, you don’t have to decide now. You can think it over, however long you need.” 

“I’m meeting my SHIELD contact tomorrow,” Natasha corrects him. “It may be a while before I see him again.” Rogers is trying to be kind, she knows. But this is her job, and it’s best that they all know which way Barnes will go under pressure. “Sergeant Barnes, is there anything else I can tell you?”

Barnes takes longer to ask, this time. “ _/Was I different?/_ ” The gun, Rogers - he could look at her, but doesn’t. “ _/Then. Before. The Captain says I was different. Was better./_ ”

He couldn’t have asked a worse question. Natasha knows what he’s thinking, how he’ll decide, which is enough that she could choose _what_ he’ll decide.

She could say how he taught her to kill, that he was the one they sent after the agents and handlers who fell from grace because he wouldn’t hesitate. Or she could say how he taught, his jokes. How happy he’d been after her first successful mission. All pieces of the truth.

Natasha could do that, if she knew the right thing to do. Barnes seems to have found enough reasons not to kill Rogers that they don’t need to be separated. But she can’t tell that staying with Rogers is doing anything for him either. “In Russia, you were exactly what you needed to be. I think now, you are what HYDRA needed you to be. They needed different things; that doesn’t mean that you are different. I know that’s not much of an answer.” It can’t be: this has to be his decision. 

“It’s enough. No. Do I pass your test, Natalia?”

“You’ll stay?” Steve’s relief is uncomfortable to watch; Barnes looks away even as he nods.

Natasha blinks. “Did you just play me?” He shouldn’t have been able to decide so quickly after the non-answer she gave him. 

“A little. I gave you my answer.” 

“Your question,” she says, thinking aloud. “You didn’t want to know what you used to be like. You wanted to see if I would compromise the test. Son of a bitch.” She would have done it if she thought Steve Rogers was in danger. It probably is good that he knows that, but - she should have seen it.

“Yes.” His expression is closer to a smile than she’s seen yet. 

“Don’t get cocky, soldier.” She meets his eyes. “If I decide Steve would be happier without you, I will leave your body in a ditch.” 

“Natasha!” Steve is predictably appalled. Barnes just nods. It’s helpful, sometimes, to know you have backup. She pats his knee and shifts back to the couch.

“The vodka ought to be cold enough now, Steve.” Steve likes to be useful. Usually. Right now he’s trying to get over being too polite to throw her out. “Or do you want to hear about Stark first?”

Steve stands, but crosses his arms. “What does he want now?”

“Eyes on the ground, Hill says. He’s trying to keep tabs on who’s using the Stark tech from our SHIELD data-dump. No engagement, just recon. The two of you desperately need to get out of this apartment.”

“You know Stark and I got off on the wrong foot. That’s not going to be a problem?”

“You’ll be able to work with him. Or with Hill. I think he’d like Barnes. All Stark’s friends are robots.” 

“Stark. The inventor?” Barnes looks to Steve, and she lets him field it. 

“HYDRA had Howard killed a long time ago, Buck. It’s his son, Tony. Tony is. . .” Steve makes a face. “Flashier. I can just about imagine what kind of equipment he’d make us use.”

She’s about to ask what Steve Rogers thinks he needs for a stakeout when Barnes offers: “I have equipment.”

Steve frowns. “Guns, yeah, but this is recon. We won’t be shooting anyone.”

“More than that. Not here.” 

Natasha decides to get the vodka herself, and give them privacy to discuss the mission they haven’t formally agreed to take. Coming back with the first bottle and glasses, she catches: “Enough for - fourteen, maybe more. Not enough transport.” 

Steve laughs, startled. “Pretty good start, though.”

“Glad you’ve worked things out,” Natasha says, and sets out the glasses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This turned out to be a 5+1 in disguise, with the +1 on its way shortly. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

### Steve

They hit the van at a dead run, back door sliding open on cue. Steve slams it behind them. Bucky catches his breath long enough to say, “Jarvis, drive.” Then lies back, gasping, his arm clanking against the floor of the van.

“Estimated arrival in forty minutes in present conditions, sirs. Captain, what status should I report?”

The other nights they’ve gone out, he’s had Jarvis report back that everything was quiet. “Third time’s the charm, I guess. Tell ‘em we took care of it.” 

Bucky pushes his night-vision goggles off, and the ski mask after it. Bucky trusts Tony Stark’s AI. That might be the best thing to come out of these recon missions, because mostly Bucky doesn’t trust anyone. But the way Bucky gets, Steve doesn’t like it much. Still and silent, like everything’s been erased but the soldier they made him into. 

“Y’know, the plan was for you to stay outside and cover the exit,” Steve says. Careful not to say he shouldn’t have come in, even though he shouldn’t have. 

Bucky turns his head without sitting up. “You were late, Captain.” 

“By a minute.”

“By three. Easier to find you than a new C.O.” ‘Handler’ is what Bucky means, but Steve couldn’t help wincing when he said it, and he’s stopped.

“It would have taken another minute,” Steve says. Laughs at himself: “I had ‘em on the ropes.” Bucky only looks blank. “Just a joke, Buck. Don’t mind me.”

“Armor, off.” Bucky moves quick, sits up and yanks him over, starts doing it himself before Steve figures out what he wants. 

“I said it’s a _joke_ , you know what a joke is? Bucky, I’m not even winded.” Bucky scowls at him. Of course HYDRA stripped the humor out of him, along with everything else. Or maybe it was the Russians: Natasha’s jokes take some getting used to. “Fine - fine, you want the pants too?”

“You could run, keep those.” It only takes Bucky a second to find the spots where the armor was hit, and he turns his glare on those instead. 

“They took a few shots at me,” Steve admits. “The armor worked, I’m okay. Bruised. You need to see?” 

“No. The armor worked.” Bucky retreats to the other side of the van. More old programming, probably. He’s having a hard time figuring out what isn’t the after-effects of HYDRA, with Bucky. 

Bucky’s safe house is a subdivided warehouse, one of a row of anonymous truck bays. Shrink-wrapped pallets that Bucky never bothered to open up. Steve’s car and two SUVs pulled up inside - Bucky had actually hit a pallet with one and left it like that. There had been maps spread on the floor, with notations in jerky Russian; Bucky had burned those the first time they came in.

The guns are laid out in neat rows along the back wall. What the Winter Soldier cared about. After securing the door, Bucky starts checking those, from the far end.

Steve decides to take a better look at the dented car. Maybe they should just leave Stark’s van here. His people can pick it up later. Or it can drive itself home. Bucky won’t like someone else coming here. But it would get them quit of Stark faster, and maybe this place too.

Bucky turns up before he’s done more than ease the car back off the pallet of - phone books, it looks like - and pry the dented hood up. "Everything is in order." 

"Great, Buck," he says without enthusiasm. “Ready to get out of here?” He shuts the hood, and it doesn’t click. Raises it to see if he can realign the catch. Bucky’s taking his time answering. 

When he finally does, it’s “what’s my mission?” again. Damn HYDRA to hell. Steve shuts the hood again, with probably more force than necessary. It sticks. 

“No mission, Bucky.” he says. “We just finished the mission.”

Bucky shifts, uncomfortable, but hell if Steve’s giving in. “You want to keep spying for Stark?” Bucky hates being put on the spot, but it’s hard to stop - Bucky acts most like himself when he gets pissed off. 

Angry, he’s more likely to be honest: he doesn’t care who he spies for. Or kills for. This time, Bucky only looks more blank. “I want a mission,” he says, quieter. 

“The mission is _rest,_ okay? Look -” Steve stops himself. “You drive the van back; I’ll take the car, meet you there.” He could use a break from Bucky. Bucky could probably use the break too. 

“Acknowledged,” Bucky says, and Steve sighs.

“Go ahead, I’ll get the doors.” Steve waits for the van to start up before he opens the garage door. And nothing happens. 

He’s already started to walk over when Jarvis says, “Captain, my apologies, there has been a short delay.”

“Something wrong with the engine?” In his memory, seeing Bucky - disturbed, not angry. 

“I am attempting to render assistance to Sergeant Barnes. May I confirm your location, Captain?” Jarvis doesn’t sound worried, but Jarvis is a machine.

Bucky’s not in the front of the van, probably. He’d be - in the back, midway down, the best angle for both the back of the van and the driver’s side. Steve rests his hands on the side. He’d like to just punch through instead. Damn it, Bucky. “Let him know I’m coming in.”

“Message relayed, Captain,” Jarvis says after a moment.

Climbing into the back of the van doesn’t get him shot, at least. Bucky’s where he thought, bent forward over his knees. Breathing too fast and shallow. Steve settles next to his, shoulder-to-shoulder without quite touching. 

Those files talked about instability after missions. HYDRA had put it down to being awake too long, but Bucky’s been free for months now. If it’s the missions themselves - “I was thinking about the Howling Commandoes. How we used to celebrate the good times, when everyone made it back.” 

That goes over like a lead balloon. “I don’t remember,” Bucky mutters finally.

“Half the time you didn’t remember the next morning either. Like when you took that major’s jeep. I had to chase you down to get it back before he woke up and missed it. When I caught up, you three had the headlights running and you were still passing the bottle around.” Steve lets himself enjoy the story. It hadn’t made it into the history books. “Next morning when I asked where you thought you were going, the last thing you remembered was your second drink. There wasn’t enough gasoline left in that jeep to drive the major out of camp.” 

“Rome,” Bucky says. “You made me drive it back in the dark.”

Steve grins. “Sure did. Bike wouldn’t fit with all of us, and you were the closest to talking sense. Rome. You remember all that?” 

“Just pieces. Nothing useful. Like -” Bucky considers, turning to look at him. “Texas, the target was in an open car. . .” He shrugs. 

“You - ” Natasha gave him a rundown of things Bucky might have done. Things his training would have made him capable of doing. President Kennedy had been on the list, but he hadn’t really thought - and the words he needs aren’t there. 

“Breathe, Rogers,” Bucky snaps. “It wasn’t me. Don’t you know what a joke is?”

Steve lets his mouth fall open this time, then pulls Bucky into a quick embrace, wondering if it’s going to get him stabbed. “Worst joke I ever heard. You jerk.”

He can feel Bucky startle at the contact, but all he does is look away and frown. “Yeah. I - I would have done it.” 

“It’s alright.” It doesn’t feel like it’s enough. “War’s over now. You don’t have to ever pick up a gun again if you don’t want.” 

“I don’t need a gun,” Bucky says, looking at the floor. “I’m the weapon.” Steve can’t see his face. He decides he doesn’t need to, wraps an arm around Bucky’s shoulders to pull him over. Bucky shudders and leans in this time. “I’m the weapon.” 

“You’re a hell of a lot more than that,” Steve says. “You’re here, and that’s -” Bucky’s crying, he’s pretty sure, and he needs to keep talking so Bucky can pretend he hasn’t noticed. 

“I shouldn’t be glad they found you. I should’ve known you were too damn stubborn to die, and I should’ve got there first.” Or he ought to wish Bucky had died fast and clean - that doesn’t need saying. “When I saw you here - I thought maybe I’d gone crazy. I’ve been seeing impossible things about once a week since they they thawed me out, but never anything I wanted. You could’ve killed ten presidents, and I’d still be happy to see you.” Even if that doesn’t mean anything to Bucky, Steve feels better for saying it. “And we still make a good team.“

“I fell apart on a surveillance mission,” Bucky says, forehead against Steve’s shoulder. 

“Mission was over hours ago, Buck. You in for the next one?” 

He’d hoped that would be an easy answer for the Winter Soldier, but Bucky’s quiet for almost a minute, pulls away and scrubs a hand across his face. “You jumped out of a plane.” Watching him again. “Without a parachute. Onto a ship, middle of the ocean. Natalia said. Were you trying to die?”

Even Bucky can’t make a joke out of that one. “I had a job to do. I stopped worrying about getting home again a long time ago, that’s all.” 

“You should listen to yourself. War’s over. Go home.”

“Good idea,” Steve agrees swiftly. That was the plan to begin with; he wonders how long it’ll take Bucky to catch on.

Not long. “You’re a real son of a bitch, Rogers.” 

Steve laughs. “You just figured that out, you really don’t remember much.”

“I forget why I put up with you, too.”

“Old time’s sake.” Now would be a good time to remind Bucky that he’s even older than Steve - but he’d better cut it short before Bucky’s programming catches up with his mouth. “You okay to go? Just back to the apartment.”

“I’m fine,” Bucky claims. “This time you drive.”

Bucky does sound better. Less like he’s been ordered to his death. Less like a weapon. “Anything you want, pal. Let’s go home.”


End file.
